Bleader

Jay Smooth just broke my mind

I don't have a lot to add to Jay Smooth's essay on Michael Jackson, save for a couple notes.

First, I admire how long he took to do anything. Journalism is always in a rush to memorialize and opinionate, and it was so even before the age of the Web. When people die, they die for a long time - there really isn't a rush, unless it's just to be first, to catch that first wave of pageviews. Jay Smooth has the confidence to sit on it for a couple weeks, to know that he's good enough that people will care what he thinks even after millions of other people have weighed in. For lack of a better word, that's cool, in the midcentury sense.

Second, the main reason I admire Jay Smooth is that he's doing oratory, which is a dying art form. I was fortunate enough to take a couple years of public speaking during college, or I should say I was fortunate enough to be forced to take it. And I hated it, for the first year, until I figured it out and learned how to do (though obviously not as well) what he's doing. When it clicks, it's a rush.

Anyway, I love Ill Doctrine generally, but this is above and beyond the call.